Recently I met Frank Monte, an Australian private eye who operates Monte Investigation Group, one of the largest private detective businesses in the world, with offices in Sydney, Los Angeles and New York. Thirty years ago, when he first went out on his own, a lot of the investigation business was marital. Spouses wanted to know who was cheating and with whom. Four-fifths of the clients were wives and one-fifth were husbands. The women were usually the ones without the money until they got the goods on the men, so there was a lot of hardball playing and a lot of "divorce raids" to produce results.

A divorce raid means walking into the bedroom while a couple is having sex. How it goes depends on the professional. This is tricky, according to Monte, because 1) you have to make sure the couple is there; 2) you have to make sure they are having sex - because if they aren't committing adultery, the break-in is an offence; and 3) you have to make sure you don't get killed. It happens. Seven people have been killed in Monte's long experience; a guy jumps out of bed and shoots a gun, or someone gets hit with a bottle.

The investigator does his or her best to make sure the adultery is being committed by following the couple for usually two or three weeks. It's difficult work to watch a house for ten or 20 hours straight, because most of the time nothing is happening. In this computer age, according to Monte, it is also difficult to find people willing to wait around. Recruits now coming out of police departments and out of the FBI prefer to do their sleuthing in front of a computer terminal, where they can check out IDs, social security numbers, credit ratings, dental appointments, license plates and credit card purchases. The downside to this new technology, Monte argues, is the lack of experience agents gain in dealing with the nuances of people's daily activities.

The sexual revolution and the changes in the divorce laws in the 1970s also have dramatically altered the private-eye business. In Monte's words, "legally, nobody cares who is screwing anybody anymore." Individuals will still hire an investigator to spy simply because they want to know what someone is doing, or to "get something" on that person. In the conjugal relationships department, husbands and especially wives are still curious and suspicious about what they imagine to be their partner's infidelities. Although following erant husbands in particular doesn't often produce the anticipated results. Monte has followed men who, instead of going home, went not with another women but alone to the movies, or to gamble or to take a long drive in the country - anything to be by themselves. Wives tend to disbelieve these results and will get themselves a new private investigator upon hearing them.

The dropoff in the marital espionage business, however, has been more than replaced by industrial espionage, or more specifically, the business of spying on the competitions. This takes all forms. Private investigators may be hired just to watch the activities of some corporate president or CEO to keep tabs on how his business is doing. Surveillance is usually employed only for observing business contacts and activity. The corporate question is: Do we want to hurt them, or find out about them? People's sex lives are mostly unimportant, although they may be reported on, depending on the private eye. Frank Monte once was surveilling for a rival when he found that the married man was having an affair. Although he was aware that another investigator might have chosen to expose the matter, this information was not passed on to the corporate client because Monte felt it in no way affected the business of either party involved.

Another method for investigators is infiltration. A number of years ago, Monte was hired by an American corporation to work his way into a European competitor to find out who was stealing its marketing secrets. Through this job he met Aristotle Onassis, who had ties to the American corporation.

Impressed by Monte's work, and because the private eye speaks fluent Italian, Onassis hired him to work out of a residence in Rome where the Greek shipping magnate maintained offices. Onassis was the object of a lot of espionage attention, and he rightly felt paranoid about it, according to Monte. Onassis believed that the CIA, among other things, had been responsible for the air crash that killed his only son, Alexander; Onassis also felt he had many enemies out there amidst his competition. He already had a bodyguard who had once worked for Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Monte went to live with his new client for four months at the Roman headquarters, where the shipping tycoon worked around the clock, taking 15 or 30 minute catnaps every few hours. Monte was soon awed by Onassis, who had an encyclopaedic retention of business details, both technical and financial. The shipowner had no interest in his competition's personal lives, but he wanted to know absolutely everything about everything they did in business. Likewise, it was a given that all of his phones were tapped.

One of Monte's first assignments was to set up a phone system in a nearby tailor shop where Onassis could go for a "fitting" and make certain phone calls. Another job was to eavesdrop on business meetings at the Onassis home and then follow the people after they left the meeting. One night, after Onassis met with a group of Italian businessmen who were selling him parts for his new supertankers, Monte followed them to a restaurant where he sat nearby eating and listening. As they passed around more wine, the group grew increasingly louder and more convivial. Soon they were congratulating themselves for their great success in convincing the Greek to buy ship parts at $10 million a piece, or twice the price they would have been willing to sell them for.

The following day Onassis called the Italians in for another meeting: he wanted to renegotiate and now had decided he wanted to pay just $4 million. The shocked Italians finally agreed to sell at their original price of $5 million. This is an excellent example of how corporate spying can pay off with optimal results.

Onassis was very busy all the time. He couldn't understand why people had personal problems, when working and learning were so all encompassing. He had many enemies in business because he was constantly playing both sides. The Americans felt he had a strangle-hold on Arab oil, while the Arabs felt he had a strangle-hold on shipping. For him it was all business; he wanted to make a profit every day, often remarking that "a little profit is better than no profit." Through his relationship with his famous mistress, opera diva Maria Callas, he practiced what could be lightly called "black magic." Everyday he would don a ceremonial robe and, in a special room with a pentacle, a staff, a knife, a ring, a cup of incense, he would meditate over changing the course of nature by willpower. He used this technique mainly to focus on his day, to clearly decide what it was he wanted to accomplish.

Contrary to the social image that he enjoyed, Onassis was immersed almost entirely in his business. During the months Monte worked for him in Rome, Monte never saw Jackie, though Onassis was married to her at that time. However, Onassis did have someone following her as well as bugging her conversations, the tapes of which he would listen to for hours. Nor did Monte see Maria Callas. In fact, there were no women in Onassis' life during this time; only according to Monte, "an occasional 25-year-old Rudolph-Valentino-type male, who would visit every few days." This was an inclination, later documented by biographers, that Onassis had attempted to keep secret throughout his life.

The success of the Onassis job led Monte to a more exotic assignment, for the Sheik of Dubai. After the British left the United (Continued on page 69